This thread was inspired by this post, from the thread
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webboard/Forum26/HTML/013165.html")EVN:W Classic/EVO questions(/url)

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Originally posted by Clean:
**Haven't posted for sometime. Still enjoy the games. new lease of life with the conversion of the first two to the EVN engine. Now to topic:

Not sure whether we'll get a 1.0.l for the conversions from Ambrosia. My feeling is they'd be happy if WE drove the creation of a 1.0.1 plug.

Provided we followed the basic guideline of fixing only what was absolutely necessary to ensure an authentic emulation of the original. No tweeks to game play, modernisation, cheapening of ships, speeding up of ships, etc.

From this thread i take it that there is almost concensus that weapons need 1.5x speed improvement plus perhaps a duration chnage and that's about it?

To be regarded as official, a 1.0.1 plug would ideally be signed off by Soviet Mikee, even if he didn't have the time himself to do the work. For now, perhaps another thread for a proposed 1.0.1, limited to only proposed plug inclusions and probably on the developer board?

**

The EV and EVO ports are truly Ambrosian gifts. We just want to polish them to an even brighter shine.

Who will write the update plug? I don't know. I'd love to hear from someone at Ambrosia as to whether they want to control this. Otherwise, I nominate Soviet mikee to referee the process, if he wants to.

Hopefully this thread will be about bugs in the ports and unintentional differences between the ports and the original games. More power to you if you have ideas about how to make the ports BETTER than the original game -- but please post those ideas in a separate topic.

To start things off, here are 4 issues I'd like to see addressed:

1. The weapon speed & duration issue is mentioned by Clean above, and is discussed in (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webboard/Forum26/HTML/013165.html")EVN:W Classic/EVO questions(/url).

2. There's at least one mission bug in the EVO port (OnAccept field of mission 176 should read "G142"), as explained by Guy in (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webboard/Forum26/HTML/013281.html")EVN Override Faults(/url).

3. Ship weapons all fire from the centers of the ships, rather than specified locations on the hull as in EVO. See discussion in (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webboard/Forum26/HTML/013281.html")EVN Override Faults(/url).

4. A new one! I've dominated a planet in the EVO port, and don't seem to be attracting any bounty hunters. I miss them like I'll miss the mosquitos when they die out this winter, but they should be there for authenticity's sake. My guess is that a mission (with an AvailRecord of -32001?) has to be added to the port to get them back.

That's what I've got to start. Please contribute your own gracious gripes, about either of the two conversions.

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Om Noppo Noppo Om!

5. Some guided weapons in both ports have odd turning rates. Maybe there's a reason for this, but to keep true to the original EVO weapons should all be 30ş per second except for pursuit missiles which should be 90ş per second.

Another note on the speed issue: Weapon turning circles must also be kept the same. Once the turn rates are all corrected, their proper speeds could be worked out by taking note of the size of the turning circle in the original and then adjusting the speed in the port until they match.

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

Four more problems. The first three are more fully described by Vasi, and are currently under discussion, in (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webboard/Forum8/HTML/004942.html")Nova port bugs - Zidara, Cargo Transporter(/url) in the board for EVO:

6. The Zidara fighter bay (and other outfits?) disappears from your ship the first time you visit the outfitters after purchasing it. Fixable by changing Tech from 32767 to 999.

7. FuelRegen flags are set incorrectly on the Cargo Transporter and the UE Cruiser.

8. The "Rescue Voinian Defector" mission isn't setting b1001 on success.

9. Here's another omission I noticed myself: Pict resources 5035-5038 and 5040-5043 are blank, so no comm (or shipyard) graphics show up for several ships, including the Zachit fighter and several of the Arada variants.

There are more bug reports among the discussions at (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webboard/Forum8/HTML/004909.html")EVN Override playing well?(/url). This is another thread on the EVO board.

What other existing threads are going to be important reading for update plug compilers?

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Om Noppo Noppo Om!

Quote

Originally posted by Dr. Trowel:
**6) The Zidara fighter bay (and other outfits?) disappears from your ship the first time you visit the outfitters after purchasing it. Fixable by changing Tech from 32767 to 999.

7. FuelRegen flags are set incorrectly on the Cargo Transporter and the UE Cruiser.

8. The "Rescue Voinian Defector" mission isn't setting b1001 on success.

9. Here's another omission I noticed myself: Pict resources 5035-5038 and 5040-5043 are blank, so no comm (or shipyard) graphics show up for several ships, including the Zachit fighter and several of the Arada variants.

**

6. Can't understand why that is. Well, as long that fix works I guess it needs doing.

7. There's no mistakes here. The flags and FuelRegens are the same as the original. UE Cruiser simply doesn't have any regen and the Cargo Transporter doesn't allow the player to take advantage of it. However, I see the latter has been changed in the latest Override plug: "EVO1.0.2EnahncementsFixes".

8. You're right. However, this is a good thing. It means it is consistent with the original.

9. Odd. On my one 5035-5044 are missing.

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

Quote

Originally posted by Dr. Trowel:
**4) A new one! I've dominated a planet in the EVO port, and don't seem to be attracting any bounty hunters. I miss them like I'll miss the mosquitos when they die out this winter, but they should be there for authenticity's sake. My guess is that a mission (with an AvailRecord of -32001?) has to be added to the port to get them back.

**

You could make the mission set a bit corresponding to the activeon field of a special Bounty Hunter pers, but what happens when you release the stellar? The bit could be reversed but if you had dominated more than one stellar and then released only one of them then you would still lose the bounty hunter.
I don't see any practical way this could really work.

Here's one way but I don't like it:
You could have all planets set to give a special oufit on domination and then remove it on release. The outfit would have a specific contribute flag. A special cron has that same require flag and sets a bit to activate the bounty hunter pers onstart. The cron has an iterative entry so that it will keep going as long as you have at least one of those outfits (ie. as long as have at least one stellar dominated). The cron reverses the bit onend (ie. when you no longer have any stellars dominated), disabling the bounty hunter.

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

Quote

Originally posted by Guy:
**9) Odd. On my one 5035-5044 are missing.
**

9. In original Override, ships 167 (the Strange Asteroid) and 172 (an Igazra variant) have neither a shipyard graphic (5039 & 5044) nor a comm graphic (5339 & 5344). That's why I didn't list their shipyard/comm graphics as missing from the Nova port. My guess is that this Igazra is a ship that can't be bought and never responds to hails, while the "Asteroid" is, well, "Strange."

(Trivia: I think there's a little Strange Asteroid EVO plug-in with a read me that explains that the Override scenario developer had planned to have the asteroid be a Coke vending machine floating in space, or at least had considered the idea.)

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Om Noppo Noppo Om!

Quote

Originally posted by Dr. Trowel:
My guess is that this Igazra is a ship that can't be bought and never responds to hails, while the "Asteroid" is, well, "Strange."

The Strange Asteroid, in fact, has no graphics of its own, although it does borrow the spďn from the shuttle.

The Igazra has no hail graphic since it cannot be hailed (although it can be when it's an escort, something the designers over looked). I thought it had a shipyard graphic in the original, although I'm not sure on that one - I'd have to check.

Quote

Originally posted by Dr. Trowel:
Trivia: I think there's a little Strange Asteroid EVO plug-in with a read me that explains that the Override scenario developer had planned to have the asteroid be a Coke vending machine floating in space, or at least had considered the idea.

That was in fact the original reason the Strange Asteroid was created; the developers never got around to finding the textures, which is why I created the plug-in. For reference, here's the quote from scenario designer Peter Cartwright that I used in the Read Me file:

Quote

Chris, my graphics designer, had a design for a coke machine he wanted me to use somewhere in my scenario , writes Peter Cartwright. I explained that there wasn't really any obvious (or useful) place for it to be used - but then had this random idea for a mission involving a mysterious coke machine drifting through space which the player would have to investigate for some bemused aliens. This became the Strange Asteroid mission which you may be aware of. Unfortunately, I got the model for the coke machine, but not the image with 'Coca-Cola' on which was rather vital for the graphic to be useful. So I put in a temporary place-holder graphic, left the mission in, and waited for the image to turn up... I'm still waiting. I think he's lost it himself actually. Anyway, if anyone can put their own coca-cola graphic on the design, and put the whole thing into a plug, I'd be thrilled to see that mission make sense at last (or at least, for it to make as little sense as it was meant to make).

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David Arthur | (url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url)
Truth! Justice! Freedom! And A Hard-Boiled Egg!

(This message has been edited by David Arthur (edited 09-02-2003).)

9. There is a shipyard pict for the "regular" Igadzra (ship 154, pict 5026). The shipyard pict not included in Override 1.0.2 (5044) is for the Igadzra variant with the beam weapon. The variant can't be bought; no graphic is needed for the port if it also can't be hailed and can't be captured as an escort -- which would be true if it only occurs as a mission ship.

It's only one graphic, though, and it's a copy of an existing one.... It would be kind to simply put it in the port, rather than letting future plug-in designers stumble into this silly little hole!

Thanks for the Strange Asteroid review, David! Interestingly (to me, anyway), the asteroid is hail-able in the port. I'm thinking that was true in Override, too.... But would it be breaking the port's spirit of historical accuracy to include a comm graphic for the asteroid? It could simply be the words "Drink Coke" in red on a white background, perhaps.

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Om Noppo Noppo Om!

So there's a total of 10 shipyard/hail graphics missing from the port. 6 of them are simple duplicates of existing ones (5035 from 5028, 5040 & 5041 from 5025, 5042 from 5029, 5043 from 5017, 5044 from 5026); 5036-5038 will need to be created; 5039 needs a graphic since it can be hailed (although it shouldn't) and should really be a duplicate of 5000. It would look funny if you halied what appeared to be a shuttle and then got told to drink coke.

I had another think about the bounty hunter idea I had and decided it wasn't so bad. The outfit could be called "dominated stellars" or something and then you could keep track of how many stellars you had dominated by looking at your extras.

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

Quote

Originally posted by Dr. Trowel:
(B)This thread was inspired by this post, from the thread
EVN:W Classic/EVO questions

I've been seeing some of the same problems mentioned in this thread, plus a few more. I think all of them could be "TechLevel == 32767" thing: the UE Cloak, (Zidagar) System Upgrade and the Plasma Siphon all disappear pretty fast. I think this happens the first time I load the pilot file after getting the outfit (and get the worrying "this file appears to refer to resources from a plug in not loaded" message).

I also notice warnings in debuglog about these outfits not having descriptions... could this be related? I could dig further, but I'm about to go on holiday

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Quote

Originally posted by Guy:
**It would look funny if you halied what appeared to be a shuttle and then got told to drink coke.
**

Looking funny was my goal! If we don't have unanimity on this, though, I suppose it shouldn't go in the official port update.

That's if there ever IS an "official port update," of course.... This thread still hasn't attracted the attention of any Ambrosian willing to say whether an update will ever be labelled "official!"

I think our discussion should continue regardless -- there are going to have to be update plugs written whether or not they are ever blessed to appear in the "essentials" add-ons category.

In other news, there's a thread on the ports over at EVNova.net, too.

6. My UE cloak disappeared, just as mwh predicted. the "no outfit description" linkage is interesting....

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Om Noppo Noppo Om!

(This message has been edited by Dr. Trowel (edited 09-04-2003).)

Quote

Originally posted by Dr. Trowel:
**Looking funny was my goal! If we don't have unanimity on this, though, I suppose it shouldn't go in the official port update.

That's if there ever IS an "official port update," of course.... This thread still hasn't attracted the attention of any Ambrosian willing to say whether an update will ever be labelled "official!"

I think our discussion should continue regardless -- there are going to have to be update plugs written whether or not they are ever blessed to appear in the "essentials" add-ons category.

**

Remember we're keeping it true to the original. Of course, you could always add a pic like that to DA's plug and convert it to Nova, but if you're going to make modifications you should really add an extra government for the asteroid and make it so it can't be hailed.

Keep waiting and hope that someone does notice this. If we think we've found all the mistakes and still no-ones noticed then you could email a list of them all to ambrosia and politely request an update.

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

I'm already working on an update, but feel free to list all the bugs you guys think are there and I'll look over them and fix 'em as well. I have my own list of things that need to be fixed and looked into which I am currently doing.

(This message has been edited by Soviet mikee (edited 09-04-2003).)

Quote

Originally posted by Soviet mikee:
**I'm already working on an update, but feel free to list all the bugs you guys think are there and I'll look over them and fix 'em as well. I have my own list of things that need to be fixed and looked into which I am currently doing.
**

Great!

6. I just came up against the disappearing outfits problem for the 3rd time -- I lost a Voinian Fighter Bay. 'Finally decided to get systematic about responding to the problem.

Here's the list of TechLevel 32767 outfits, courtesy of w00tware's ConText utility:

136 Voinian Fighter Bay
138 UE Fighter Bay
145 UE Cloaking Device
146 Plasma Siphon
147 Nebula Penetration Device
181 Zidagar Fighter Bay
197 Exp. Shield Generator
198 Systems Upgrade
254 UE Marine Gear

Changing TechLevel to 999 does seem to keep these things from vanishing upon the next visit to an outfitter. Adding outfit descs to those outfits missing them doesn't work as an alternative solution to the problem.

(Aside: I suppose someone might find a use for automatically vanishing outfits in an expansion plug someday. The effect on fighter bays is especially interesting. If they are deployed when the bay vanishes, you keep the fighters. In effect, you get extra escorts that don't count against the 6-escort maximum.)

I put this change all by itself in a little plug; if I don't find evidence that anyone else has done something similar, I'll see about putting it online for comments as a candidate for inclusion in Soviet mikee's bigger better update.

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Om Noppo Noppo Om!

OK, my quicky fix for Problem #6 (disappearing outfits) is up on my new web page. All it does is change some TechLevels to 999. The address is in my sig.

Let me know if this causes troubles, everybody. If there are no objections or problems, I'll submit it to Ambrosia's EVN Add-ons page soon.

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Dr. Trowel's E.S.W.P.:
(url="http://"http://home.comcast.net/~drtrowel/")http://home.comcast.net/~drtrowel/(/url)
Om Noppo Noppo Om!

(This message has been edited by Dr. Trowel (edited 09-06-2003).)

Quote

Originally posted by Dr. Trowel:
**
I put this change all by itself in a little plug; if I don't find evidence that anyone else has done something similar, I'll see about putting it online for comments as a candidate for inclusion in Soviet mikee's bigger better update.

**

While I appreciate the effort don't worry about it. I have a method of tracking, listing, investigating and dealing with bugs. I already have this one taken care of.

As for your second post, about putting it up, I think it might be bothersome to some people to see little bits and pieces of plugs being put up. Might as well wait for the whole update...

Quote

Originally posted by Soviet mikee:
**I'm already working on an update, but feel free to list all the bugs you guys think are there and I'll look over them and fix 'em as well. I have my own list of things that need to be fixed and looked into which I am currently doing.

**

Have you put any thought into adding bounty hunters, like the idea I suggested?

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

I think it's rather important that the armor regeneration be put back in, as it was in the original EVO. Armor is very important to the balance of the game, as that's the Voinians' main strength. A lot of the Voinian ships become far less rugged and durable when you know you can't regenerate in an extended firefight.

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Originally posted by wes:
**I think it's rather important that the armor regeneration be put back in, as it was in the original EVO. Armor is very important to the balance of the game, as that's the Voinians' main strength. A lot of the Voinian ships become far less rugged and durable when you know you can't regenerate in an extended firefight.

**

Yeah, that's another thing. It's not possible to get it all working exactly as it did in EVO but it would be better if the armour regenerated as well as the shields.

The problem with the Nova engine is that you have shields regenerating over the top of your armour. If you're fighting against a Voinian ship you'll switch to a different weapon that is better against armour once its shields go down. But then its shields start regenerating and your shots are more or less wasted because they hit the shields rather then the armour.

Maybe ships should have their weak side regenerate slower than their strong side. e.g. Voinian shield regeneration would be slow as would UE armour regeneration.

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

Here's a very minor gripe: even though it normally played no role in EVO unless you activated an easter egg, I'd like to see the resources for the Forklift put into the EVN conversion so that plugs that used them could work as they did before.

(Yeah, it's easy enough to make a new plug with a forklift in it.... I'm being a purist here about the recreate-the-old-game thing. It would be nice to have the weapon once more tucked in there for beginning plug-makers to discover. Also, if Port Authority or EVONE now or ever run automatically enough for someone to port a plug without knowing all its contents before playing it, one could be pleasantly -- or very unpleasantly -- surprised to come across that nasty little wracker of the warehouse.)

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Dr. Trowel's E.S.W.P.:
http://home.comcast.net/~drtrowel/
Om Noppo Noppo Om!